Today, I’d like to share some­thing even more per­sonal than clothes, make-up or a tooth­brush: book­marks. We all have our favorite sites or tools to make blog­ging eas­ier… here are mine: a col­lec­tion of links to online tools, great blogs and gen­er­a­tors for the geeks impaired.

Note that all these tools are free and none of these links are sponsored!

Mon­e­tiz­ing a blog takes time. First, you have to build good con­tent. Yes, just sign­ing up for a blog isn’t enough. These two days old blogs full of ads but still with the default “wel­come” mes­sage always makes me laugh. Yeah, I wish it was that easy.…! You also have to some­how mas­ter the basic of SEO (Search Engine Opti­miza­tion) to be found on search engines. And finally, you have to inves­ti­gate the best ways to make money on your blog.

A fun part of blog­ging is tweak­ing and cus­tomiz­ing your blog. Not only you will be able to trans­form a default template/ theme into a unique piece of art­work, but you will also get a chance to catch read­ers’ eyes. And that’s priceless!

We’ve already cov­ered what you needed to put on your blog, and for Word­Press users, what were the best plu­g­ins. Now, let’s have a lot at what you can do to tweak and cus­tomize your blog.

What most peo­ple (includ­ing me when I first started) don’t real­ize, is no mat­ter how great your blog is, chances are that if you don’t pro­mote it, peo­ple won’t find it. There are appar­ently over 50–60 mil­lions blogs world­wide and your blog could be lost in a dark cor­ner of the inter­net for­ever if you don’t “hunt” for readers.

Do you have a blog? Yes? Good. Cause I’m a pretty curi­ous woman (some would say it’s an euphemism…) and I love to browse blogs. Chances are that if you ever left a com­ment at my blog, ever sent me an email or just showed up here, I vis­ited you. I have plenty of feed in my RSS Reader and I’m pretty quick to click on the magic “sub­scribe” but­ton. But I’m human too — not all blogs attract me.

In my first few months as a Word­Press user, I was a vic­tim of the well-known “download’em all” syn­drom — that’s how you end of with 50 plu­g­ins, half of them being bro­ken or not in use. Took me a while to down­size my impres­sive plu­gin list and keep all the best, but I think I got it now.

When I’ll take the oath of cit­i­zen­ship, I’ll have to swear that “I will be faith­ful and bear true alle­giance to Her Majesty Queen Eliz­a­beth the Sec­ond”. Yes… even though Canada is a sov­er­eign coun­try, it is a con­sti­tu­tional monar­chy with Eliz­a­beth II, Queen of Canada, as head of state, and a par­lia­men­tary democ­racy with a fed­eral sys­tem. Sounds com­pli­cated, doesn’t it?

Canada has now adopted some of the Inuit cul­ture as a national iden­tity: sym­bols are used (such as the inuk­shuk for the 2010 Van­cou­ver Olympic Games), Inuit and First Nations’ art is dis­played in the best gal­leries through­out the coun­try and orga­ni­za­tions pro­mote and defend Abo­rig­i­nals’ rights. The cul­ture is still alive… and vib

Don’t ever mis­take a Cana­dian for an Amer­i­can. I mean, seri­ously! It’s the best way to get a snow­ball thrown at you. The truth is, despite being influ­enced by Amer­i­can cul­ture, Canada has a true dis­tinct society.

His­tor­i­cally speak­ing, Canada has been influ­enced by Euro­pean cul­ture, espe­cially British and French. Later on, it also incor­po­rated Abo­rig­i­nal cul­ture into main­stream Cana­dian soci­ety. Var­i­ous immi­gra­tion waves shaped the coun­try as well.

Granted, these pic­tures mostly depict Chi­na­town… well, we all have our favorite neigh­bor­hood, right? But the coun­try is truly diverse: tra­di­tional Chi­na­towns and Lit­tle Italy area can be found close by Ukrain­ian, Russ­ian, South-East Asian, Latino and Indian neigh­bor­hoods, and I bet you could find a com­mu­nity news­pa­per in almost every lan­guage on earth in Canada.

Granted, when it comes to dan­ger­ous and weird ani­mals, Aus­tralia is prob­a­bly num­ber one (I will never for­get dri­ving at dusk in Alice Spring… bloody kan­ga­roos!). But Canada, with its huge land mass and small pop­u­la­tion den­sity, also has a great wildlife.

Yes, Cana­dian treats. Good. Sweet stuffs to help us sur­vive harsh win­ter. Just have a look at that!
Beaver tails that are also a typ­i­cal piece of Canadian-ism, although pop­u­lar every­where in North Amer­ica : it’s a piece of fried dough, usu­ally with some sweet spread on top (yes, maple syrup is of course a favorite!). Mostly eaten at fes­ti­vals and dur­ing out­door activ­i­ties, it’s a win­ter favorite.